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I have come up with this theory. You see, much like Chris Mathews and Andrea Mitchell, I am struggling with the idea that this John McCain is the same guy I remember from before this year.
So my theory isn't just that he doesn't actually know what his campaign is doing, it is that he is a) dead or b) being confined out of public view and, in his place, the Republicans and Karl Rove have an animatronic machine in his place. Almost like the movie Dave but without the real life stand in.
Is that ridiculous? I think so. The events of the last eight years make me less likely to just dismiss it out of hand though.
Reality is, this man has decided that winning is more important than honor. Win or lose, Senator John McCain cannot, with any kind of private introspective honesty, look back on this campaign and say he ran it honorably.
From AP on The View today:
McCain said he had chosen Palin because she would help to reform Washington, specifically cited curbing federal spending for earmarks. When pressed about Palin's record of requesting and accepting such money for Alaska, McCain ignored the record and said, "Not as governor she didn't."
From the Anchorage Daily News, again:
For the 2007 federal budget year, the administration of former Gov. Frank Murkowski submitted 63 earmark requests totaling $350 million, Palin's staff said. That slid to 52 earmarks valued at $256 million in Palin's first year. This year, the governor's office asked the delegation to help them land 31 earmarks valued at $197 million.
Folks, there is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between reducing the amount of the earmarks you request for your state and claiming you have been asking for no earmarks. The McCain campaign and, now from his mouth too, John McCain, continue to claim the latter when it is a patently false assertion and has been proven so, demonstrably, repeatedly, over the course of at least a week.
I think my animatronic explanation works best if you don't think that McCain could be consciously doing this.
Andrew Sullivan, also trying to reach on this, has another possible explanation:
There are two possibilities. 1. He's lying, regardless of the consequences. 2. He really hasn't been briefed or cannot retain the briefing or is simply in denial about the facts.
He supports hypothesis #2. I guess we all seem to want to believe in the old John McCain still.
Whether it's because he has completely derailed 'The Straight Talk Express,' he doesn't know/understand what it actually happening, or he is really an animatronic stand in, this is really a very sad process to watch.
As an aside, another quick quote from that AP Link:
"My heart sort of runs with McCain and my mind probably tends to run toward Obama." — David Scorup, 58, a county government official in Othello, Wash.
Would that there were more like this man.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern Sphere: Related Content
